Uneven Institutionalisation of Polish Greens 2004-2015

The successes of Green parties in Western European countries, and after 1989 in several post-communist Central and East European states, revealed a high potential of a political ideology based on principles of sustained development, decentralisation, tolerance and equality, and contributed to high expectations of the Greens in Poland, both from the party members and supporters and leaders of other political formations. The Polish Greens were a significant novelty on the Polish political scene in terms of their ideological profile and internal organisation. Therefore, since the beginning they attracted the media attention and support of the European Green Party. However, the results achieved by them proved the expectations to have been radically overestimated, mostly due to unfinished and uneven process of party institutionalisation. Data sources for this paper come from an eleven-year research project (2004-2015) on institutionalisation of the Polish Greens, which started with the party formation. The research methods included regular surveys at official party congresses, interviews with key position holders, participatory observation, analysis of party manifestos, documents and media coverage, and national and cross-national survey data analysis. Changes in ideological stance and organisational structure of the party, decision making and leader selection methods, internal conflicts, relations with other political actors, professionalisation of the Greens’ actions in the public debate and during electoral competitions are analysed with respect to the theory of party institutionalisation, to which I contribute with expanded set of empirical indexes, adjusted to capture changes in small parties, lacking parliamentary representation.